Good news from the U.S., India, and Ethiopia

First, the U.S.  The large P.R. firm Edelman took on the GEO Group, a multibillion dollar business based in Florida, as a client.  The GEO group was contracted to run immigration detention centers.  It was the company separating migrant children from their parents, and Edelman was hired to burnish the company’s image.  Work on that project was supposed to start this month, but company employees objected.  This week Edelman announced it was dropping GEO as a client.

Now India.  India in the past four years has seen a rise in the number of Bengal tigers in the wild.  In the last decade India created over a dozen new tiger reserves.  Unfortunately, because of forest fragmentation, some tigers and humans are interacting with bad results, but the Indian government is working on the problem.  There are about 700 more tigers now than there were in 2014.

And Ethiopia.  On Monday the Ethiopian prime minister along with students, farmers, governmental officials, and just about everybody else in the country planted approximately 350 million tree seedlings.  That’s not a mistake.  350 million!  This beats Uttar Pradesh’s record, which in 2016 planted only 50 million trees in one day.

Finally, here is a really weird and, to me at least, somewhat disconcerting item.  I found myself in agreement with Donald Trump.  He called “the reverend” Al Sharpton a con man.  He’s right.  

I need to stop with the depressing news

My friend Tom sent me a link to an article by Roberto Savio that appeared in the independent journal “Consortium News.”  I thought this portion was worth repeating.

"The attention span of people has declined dramatically. The majority of Internet users do not stay on an item more than 15 seconds. In the last five years, book volumes have been shortened by 29 pages. Today, articles longer than 650 words are not accepted by columnists’ services. The last meeting of editors of international news agencies decided to aim lower, at a 17-year-old instead of a 22-year-old. In Europe, the percentage of people who buy at least one book a year now stands at 22 percent (in the United States it is now 10.5 percent). According to a recent study in Italy, only 40 percent of the population is able to read and understand a book. In the same country, 13 percent of libraries have closed in the last 10 years. 

.....

The Gutenberg generations were accustomed to dialogue and discussion. Today, 83 percent of Internet users (80 percent under the age of 21), do so only in the virtual world they carved out for themselves. People of Group A gather only with people of Group A. If they come across somebody from Group B, they insult each other. Politicians have been able to adjust rapidly to the system. The best example is Trump. All U.S. newspapers together have a circulation of 60 million copies (10 million those of quality, both conservative and progressive). Trump has 60 million followers who take his tweets as information. They do not buy newspapers, and if they watch TV it is Fox, which is Trump’s amplifier. No wonder that over 80 percent of Trump’s voters would vote for him again. And the media, which have lost the ability to offer analysis and cover processes, not just events, take the easy path. Let us follow famous people and make the famous more famous. Analytical journalism is disappearing.”

The British Are Coming

I just finished The British Are Coming by Rick Atkinson.  It was published earlier this year and covers the first two years of the American Revolution from Lexington and Concord to the winter of 1976-77 when Washington and the troops camped in Morristown, New Jersey.  The text is about 560 pages long; another 100 or so pages consists of footnotes and bibliography.

It is military history.  Atkinson does not discuss the politics of the Continental Congress, doesn’t get into the writing of the Declaration, doesn’t discuss too much of the home front.  He does detail the battles, including maps.  He also explains what the British troops and generals were doing.

I finally understand what happened, at least in the first two years.  (Atkinson is planning two more volumes.)  I never realized how close the colonies were to capturing Canada.  I never realized how close we came to losing the war on a number of occasions.  I never realized the vicious treatment the British meted out to rebels or the Revolutionaries to loyalists.

I also have a new respect for Washington.  He was a rather bad general at first, but he was a quick study.  He also listened to his other generals, who occasionally prevented major mistakes.  

I knew that many slaves fought for the British, who promised them freedom.  What I did not know was that Washington, always short of troops, also welcomed free blacks into the army.  Atkinson writes that the Revolutionary Army was the most integrated American force for almost 200 years.  

The war was also incredibly bloody and brutal  Hessian troops were known for their cruelty to the wounded.  Grape shot was used in cannons, turning them into huge shotguns.  And if you were wounded you were probably going to die.  If you were captured by the British, you were also probably going to die.  Smallpox, typhus, dysentery, and lice were common.  So was lack of food, lack of clothing, lack of shelter.  

Where are the French?  I'm sure they will show up in Vol. 2.

What were they thinking?

A child born this year will be 81 in 2100.  Maybe.  

By 2100 many mammals, amphibians, birds, and reptiles will be extinct.  Over half of Florida, most of New York City, San Jose, New Orleans, Houston, and many other coastal cities will be under water.  Crops will fail, food will be scarce, famine will be common, and much of the planet will be uninhabitable.  But wait, you say.  We can take steps to prevent that.

Here is the headline in today’s Times.  “Destruction of Amazon Rain Forest Accelerates:  Brazil’s New President Weakens Protections.”  Yesterday I posted about the Trump administration’s anger at requirements for better gas milage.  Britain now has a clown as leader.  If we will be taking steps, we better start very soon, and I don’t see it.

If that child is alive in 2100, she or he will be asking, “What were they thinking?  How could they have been so short-sighted?”  That “they” is us. 

Sheer spite

Trump’s EPA scrapped the Obama administration efforts to increase gas milage and emission standards.  Nonetheless, California made a deal with Ford, BMW, Honda, and Volkswagen to raise the milage standards.  Auto makers really don’t want to make two different types of vehicles.

The Trump administration has now threatened to challenge California’s right to set its own standards.  In the meantime, this past June was the hottest ever on record, and the earth is heating at a faster rate than scientists predicted just a few years ago.  

Trump doesn’t care about any of that.  He does care about Obama, however.  That hatred runs deep.

Note to readers:  When I don’t post something, I feel like I’m letting you down, and I feel like I owe an explanation.  Yesterday we drove to Connecticut to see two art museums–New Britain’s museum yesterday afternoon and the Hill-Stead museum this morning.  I took along my Air Book, but its power was down to less than one percent, and I forgot the charging cord.  I apologize.

By the way, both museums were wonderful.  On the other hand, we walked out of a restaurant called “Texas de Brazil” recommended by our hotel.  You were supposed to pay $47.50 for EACH person.  For that you got all you could eat.  That’s ridiculous on a number of levels.

Tears in rain

In the movie “Blade Runner” the Harrison Ford character, Rick Deckard, is supposed to terminate the Rutger Hauer character, Roy Batty, who is a non-human “replicant." 

In spite of the fact that Deckard was sent to kill him, Batty saves Deckard’s life just before he himself dies.  Batty delivers these lines in a heavy downpour:

I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe.  Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion.  I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhåuser Gate.  All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.  Time to die.

Now that is what I call a death soliloquy.  Those last two lines were not in the original script.  They were added by Rutger Hauer.  Mr. Hauer died yesterday.

The crooked Betsy DeVos

A company named Dream Center Education Holdings petitioned the U.S. Department of Education to take over a chain of for-profit trade schools.  DeVos approved.  

When dozens of the Dream Center “colleges” closed a year later, thousands of students were left with no degree after paying in thousands in tuition.  After the schools had lost accreditation, making their diplomas worthless, the school continued taking taxpayer supported financial aid from enrollees.

The head of the Education Department’s division of higher education is Diane Auer Jones, a former executive and lobbyist for for-profit colleges.

The corruption of this administration knows no bounds.  Forget Mueller.  Forget impeachment.  Concentrate on what is happening down in the agencies.  Publicize it.  When people ask why you don’t like Trump, rub their noses in this kind of stuff.

Information on the Dream Center company is from Erica L. Green and Stacy Cowley, “For-Profit Failure Clouds Education Dept., New York Times (July 24, 2019), pp. B-1, B6.